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By ANGUS MCDOWALL DUBAI—Somalia's foreign minister said Monday he doubted the international community had the will to tackle piracy and said his country's people felt "abandoned" by the world. Speaking in Dubai at an antipiracy conference, Mohammed Abdulahi Omar Asharq, foreign minister in Somalia's transitional government, criticized world powers for failing to deal robustly with Somalia's instability even as they mounted interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Ivory Coast to address international threats. "We wait to be convinced that the international community has the will to tackle piracy," Mr. Asharq said. Pirates operating from the lawless coast of the war-ravaged Horn of Africa country have hijacked dozens of ships, including large oil tankers, in recent years, adding billions of dollars in shipping costs, and leading to multinational naval patrols to protect the 30,000 vessels transiting the area every year. Mr. Asharq said that existing measures "do not address the root causes of piracy," which cost the world $7 billion a year. "The Somali community believes it has been abandoned by the international community," he said, characterizing the high death toll endured over years of civil war as "genocide." He also rebuked foreign companies for paying ransoms to pirates, averaging $4 million a hijacked ship, which means piracy "is getting worse." "The Somali government rejects in the strongest possible terms the payment of ransoms," he said. "The Somali community believes it has been abandoned by the international community." He said it was "morally indefensible" that the world had only responded to the threat of piracy with containment while taking more robust action in other countries that posed a threat to stability. Source:Wall Street Journal |
